incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

The critical consensus seems to be fairly well-defined regarding Gravity: visually stunning (IMAX 3D or nothing), lousy dialogue, Sandra Bullock isn't the best choice to carry so much of the movie.

Perhaps so much emphasis on the last two warped my expectations, but I didn't think it was that bad? Yes, there is a particularly nonsensical bit of dialogue where Clooney's character draws out Bullock's character's backstory, which he unquestionably should have known beforehand (and if he had, that particular point was emphatically not the time to bring it up). But I thought Bullock was fine, she kept me right there with her in the story.

(There's a point . . . maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through? . . . where the movie skates on the edge of disaster. To me, it does recover, but just by the skin of its teeth. That is wholly the script's responsibility, though.)

Yes, the visuals are stunning. (This article about the special effects is annoyingly split up over several pages, but it does bring together information from a bunch of different sources.) I did see it in IMAX 3D and it did not make me sick (unlike, say, the last two of the Matt Damon Bourne movies), and most of the time it struck me as fairly unobtrusive, though the occasional coming-right-toward-you! moments made me roll my eyes a bit. I am vastly unlikely to see anything else in 3D, though, since the trailer for this December's Hobbit was hideously artificial looking.

Two last thoughts: Ed Harris is the voice of Mission Control. Why don't I have Apollo 13 on disc, and more importantly, why isn't the book Apollo 13 available electronically? And now I have even more feelings about visiting one of the space shuttles last month. *sniff*

Trailers:

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit: I have read the early Jack Ryan books. This feels nothing whatsoever like them. (Say what you will about what Ryan turned into, when he started he wasn't young and he wasn't fundamentally an action hero or a spy—he has his action hero moments, but at base he's an analyst.) Also, even though I have never seen a movie with Chris Pine, I still instinctively want to punch his face every time I see it.

47 Ronin: Really? Keanu Reeves is the destined hero of a fantasy-Asia because he's a half-breed? REALLY?

Thor: The Dark World: I will require spoilers assuring me that none of the women are fridged before I attempt to make time to see it.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: I had this down in my notes as "Stiller midlife crisis (magic realism?)", before the title reveal. Then I looked up summaries of the story, and I am fairly sure that the movie has comprehensively failed to understand it.

Ender's Game: even if I didn't want to NOT support Orson Scott Card, this entirely fails to give me a Battle School vibe, which is the thing that makes the book interesting.